Changing the oil on a 2005 Lexus GX 470 is not quite the same as building a 306,500-pound 777 transatlantic airliner.

Yet that didn't stop a group of The Boeing Co. officials from visiting the Lexus of Richmond dealership yesterday to see efficiency practices firsthand.

The aerospace manufacturer and the Chesterfield County car dealer practice the Toyota Production System, a bottom-up management philosophy.

Lexus of Richmond is one of 30 dealers in the country in the Lexus Benchmark Service program, which applies the Toyota process to sales and service. It is one of only four to have reached "advanced" status, a designation within the program.

Boeing will host Lexus dealers in May at its Washington state manufacturing facility to show how it applies the process. Toyota is the parent company of Lexus.

Employees in companies that practice the process are involved in decision making. Meeting customer needs drives production and sales goals.

David M. Watts, vice president and director of fixed operations at Lexus of Richmond, walked the officials through the dealership and showed how the dealer had applied employee ideas and suggestions.

From parking a row of cars used for test drives in easy view of the showroom to car-wash protocol, Watts said, each procedure was designed to make the job easier and the customer happier.

The highlight of the tour was the dealer's Advanced Service Process.

The dealership has dedicated eight service bays where teams of two technicians perform regular service and maintenance to cars. The servicing, which would normally take 2½ hours to complete with a single technician, gets done in about 40 minutes, Watts said.

That approach frees up more experienced mechanics to work on bigger problems and increases the amount of work the dealer can do.

Watts said that in the six years since the dealer adopted the Toyota process, the monthly amount of service hours logged jumped from 1,775 to 4,400. The dealership writes about 2,100 service orders per month, he said.

While Boeing builds planes inside a 98-acre factory in Everett, Wash., and the Lexus dealership operates from a 15-acre lot shared with Whitlow Chevrolet in Midlothian, the goals are similar, said Douglas A. Crabb of Boeing's Lean Benchmarking & Collaboration, Lean Enterprise Office.

"We have to make sure our employees feel they are a part of the process, because they are the ones that know best what goes into a job and what it takes to work the best way," Crabb said.

He said the company has changed several of its parts-making processes to ease the burden on individual employees and make them feel more involved.

Customer service is key to Lexus' mission, said George Hoffer, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor of economics specializing in the auto industry.

"From the beginning, Lexus has focused on the way it treats customers as a way to differentiate itself from Toyota," he said.

Contact Louis Llovio at (804) 649-6348 or LLLovio@timesdispatch.com.